Most in-vehicle activities create sound. The sound created by each in-vehicle activity may be called a “sound activity”. The sound activity created by each in-vehicle activity is unique and can be considered as a signature of the corresponding in-vehicle activity. These sound activities are either directly associated with in-vehicle events (e.g. horn sound, indicator sound, speech, music, etc.) or indirectly associated with in-vehicle events (e.g. vehicle engine sound, wiper operation sound, mechanical gear operation sound, tyre sound, sound due to wind, sound due to rain, door operation sound, etc.).
Sound activities can affect the performance of the vehicle's audio systems, e.g. an audio enhancement system, a speech recognition system, or a noise cancellation system. It would be desirable to capture and analyse sound activities in order to improve the performance of the vehicle's audio systems.